Yahoo! confirms hacking than 500 million accounts

        Yahoo! confirms hacking than 500 million accounts

                        

VIDEOS - The US company was the victim of a computer attack led by "an entity associated with a state." Yahoo! is one of the most visited sites in the world.

Yahoo! has been the victim of a hacking off. The American website published Thursday a statement confirming the site information Recode. "We can confirm that our users' information were stolen late 2014," says the company in a statement. "We think it is an attack from an entity associated with a state." Over 500 million accounts were compromised. Affected users will be notified by Yahoo! All are already asked to change password. The company is working with US authorities to investigate the attack.

"The stolen information are names, emails, phone numbers, birth dates, hashed passwords, security questions and answers," says the company. "The investigation does not prove that passwords in clear or banking information was stolen."

Identity theft

Recode claimed that a file, sold $ 1,800 on the black market, contained IDs, easily decipherable passwords and personal information such as alternative email address and date of birth. The Motherboard website was the first to mention this piracy by August, when speaking of 200 million compromised accounts, but Yahoo had not spoken then about its authenticity. These data supposedly came from a piracy committed in 2012. Yahoo! evokes a flight dating from late 2014.

This type of hacking, even if it is old, can let fear a major impact. Yahoo! remains one of the most visited sites in the world, thanks to its email service. Yahoo! does not obliging to change passwords regularly, much of the information in this file should always be valid and allow to penetrate the accounts. Hackers can also try to break into Facebook, Gmail or Outlook of people use the same password on all sites.

These intrusions used to conduct campaigns of "phishing" impersonating the victim to steal payment data or other confidential information. For this reason, it is recommended not to use the same password on all sites and prefer long combinations, more difficult to decipher.

LinkedIn, Dropbox, Last.fm and MySpace hit

In recent years, several mass hacks have been confirmed. 2012 was such a bad year for IT security and data theft. Some 117 million LinkedIn accounts, 68 million Dropbox passwords and IDs Last.fm 43 million have been stolen this year. In 2013, it was 417 million MySpace accounts that were compromised. Typically, files are used once by pirates before being put on sale.

These revelations come as Yahoo! is engaged in a resale process to US telephone operator Verizon for $ 4.8 billion. "Shareholders have reason to fear that this will lead to a revision of the price of the transaction," wrote Recode. Both groups were officially recorded in July this acquisition, which must still be approved by the regulatory authorities.